Passing Tests
Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance at Ivy-Plus Colleges
John Friedman et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2025
Abstract:
We analyze admissions and transcript records for students at multiple Ivy-Plus colleges to study the relationship between standardized (SAT/ACT) test scores, high school GPA, and first-year college grades. Standardized test scores predict academic outcomes with a normalized slope four times greater than that from high school GPA, all conditional on students’ race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Standardized test scores also exhibit no calibration bias, as they do not underpredict college performance for students from less advantaged backgrounds. Collectively these results suggest that standardized test scores provide important information to measure applicants’ academic preparation that is not available elsewhere in the application file.
The Political Consequences of Controversial Education Reform: Lessons from Wisconsin’s Act 10
Barbara Biasi & Wayne Aaron Sandholtz
NBER Working Paper, April 2025
Abstract:
Public service reforms often provoke political backlash. Can they also yield political benefits for the politicians who champion them? We study a Wisconsin law that weakened teachers’ unions and liberalized pay, prompting mass protests. Exploiting its staggered implementation across school districts, we find that the reform cut union revenues, raised student test scores, and increased pay for some teachers. Exposure to the law increased the incumbent governor’s vote share by about 20% of his margin of victory and reduced campaign contributions to his opponent. Gains were larger in districts with stronger unions ex ante and in those where more voters benefited from the reform. Our findings highlight how even politically risky reforms can generate electoral benefits under the right circumstances.
Occupational licensing in US public schools: Nationwide implementation of Teacher Performance Assessment
Bobby Chung & Jian Zou
Journal of Public Economics, April 2025
Abstract:
Occupational licensing potentially benefits consumers by requiring workers minimum training but at the cost of reducing supply. We study this trade-off by evaluating the recent controversial roll-out of the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) that raises the entry requirement of public school teachers -- the largest licensed profession in the US. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting of different adoption timing by states, we analyze multiple data sources containing a national sample of prospective teachers and students of new teachers. With extensive controls of concurrent policies, we find that the edTPA reduced prospective teachers in undergraduate programs and less selective and minority-concentrated universities. Testing various specifications and sample criteria, we do not find evidence that the new license standard increased student test scores.
An unintended effect of school entrance age: Pushing children ahead through private school
Elisa Taveras
Journal of Population Economics, January 2025
Abstract:
In the United States, public kindergarten enrollment typically requires children to be five years old by September. However, private schools, without state-mandated cutoffs, provide an alternative option. Using American Community Survey data from 2008 to 2019, I examine the relationship between children’s birth quarter and their likelihood of attending private school. I find that children born in July to September and October to December are more likely to attend private kindergarten than those born between April and June, an effect that is not observed in higher grade levels. These findings suggest that the entrance age cutoff influences parents’ school choices, and they use private schooling to ease the cutoff constraint and initiate their children’s formal education, later transitioning them to public school as they advance through the K-12 system.
Boarding education and children's human capital development
Junjie Lin et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, April 2025
Abstract:
Boarding schools, offering an alternative residential arrangement to the traditional home environment, have been under-studied regarding their impacts on students’ non-cognitive development. This study presents findings derived from a quasi-experimental design where changes in local educational policy caused a transition from voluntary to compulsory boarding. Results indicate that boarding students outperform their non-boarding counterparts in both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, with disadvantaged students exhibiting the largest gains. We attribute these effects to increased teacher engagement in course preparation, closer teacher-student interactions, and heightened student effort toward academic pursuits. These findings underscore the potential of boarding schools as a powerful catalyst for enhancing students’ human capital.
New Advanced Placement course designed to broaden access promotes participation and demographic diversity in computer science education
Daniela Ganelin & Thomas Dee
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15 April 2025
Abstract:
Advanced Placement (AP) provides college-level courses to over 1 million US secondary students annually. Black, Hispanic, and female students have historically been underrepresented in AP Computer Science (CS). A new, broadly focused course -- AP CS Principles -- launched nationally in 2016–17 with the goal of increasing student participation and diversity. We examine its effects on AP CS participation. Combining publicly available sources, we assemble a panel dataset of annual AP exam-taking and course offerings from 2006–07 to 2020–21 at Massachusetts high schools. Using synthetic difference-in-differences, we estimate that offering the new course led to 16 additional yearly AP Computer Science exams per school, more than tripling baseline exam counts for the average adopting school. Exam counts among female and Black or Hispanic students more than quadrupled. The new exams were concentrated in AP Computer Science Principles, with no statistically significant reduction in exam counts for the preexisting AP CS course. We also estimate that offering the new course increased schools’ probability of having any AP CS exam participation by 29 percentage points, with larger gains for female and Black or Hispanic students. We find some evidence of positive spillover effects on several other AP courses. The results suggest the promise of course design and availability in promoting engagement and diversity in advanced STEM education.
Does School Funding Matter in a Pandemic? COVID-19 Instructional Models and School Funding Adequacy
Mark Weber & Bruce Baker
AERA Open, March 2025
Abstract:
The factors that influenced school districts’ decisions to offer virtual, hybrid, or in-person instruction during the 2020–2021 school year -- the first full school year after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic -- have been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Some of this research examines the influence of school spending, among other factors; however, these studies do not consider spending in relation to cost, “cost” being the amount needed for a school district to achieve a given outcome. This paper uses a measure of adequacy, which is the amount of spending under or over estimated cost, to determine whether spending correlates with the amount of time a school district offered virtual instruction. We find that spending adequacy significantly and substantially predicts time spent in virtual instruction: for every $1,000 positive change in adequacy (closing a gap and/or adding to a surplus), the time spent in virtual schooling decreases 0.9 percentage points. A one standard deviation positive change in adequacy, therefore, results in 12.8 fewer days of virtual instruction. While our findings are descriptive, they do require future researchers to consider school spending adequacy, as much as any other factor, as a predictor of pandemic instructional models.
Putting School Surveys to the Test
Joshua Angrist et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2025
Abstract:
School districts increasingly gauge school quality with surveys that ask about school climate and student engagement. We use data from New York City's middle and high schools to compare the long-run predictive validity of surveys with that of conventional test score value-added models (VAMs). Our analysis leverages the New York school match, which includes an element of random assignment, to validate a wide range of school quality estimates. We contrast the predictiveness of survey- and test-based measures for school effects on consequential outcomes related to high school graduation and college enrollment. Survey data generate better predictions of school impacts on high school graduation than test scores. But school effects on advanced high school diplomas and college attainment are better predicted by test score VAMs than surveys. We quantify the practical value of test-based and survey-based school quality measures by simulating the effects of access to one or both types of information for parents. Parents interested in boosting their children's college attainment benefit more from test score value-added than from survey data.
Effects of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on Public School Students’ Achievement and Graduation Rates
Anna Egalite & Andrew Catt
AERA Open, March 2025
Abstract:
We examined the competitive effects of the largest, statewide K–12 private school voucher program in the United States. We relied on network proximity data to generate a drive-time measure that accounts for road lengths, intersection turn times, speed limits, and traffic patterns. This allowed us to calculate travel time between two points in 1-minute intervals. We used this precise measure in a difference-in-differences framework to examine impacts on student math and English language arts test scores and graduation rates. Using a student-level dataset that covers the 2006–07 through 2015–16 school years, we found little evidence that the average student in an Indiana traditional public school had been affected -- either positively or negatively -- by the enactment and growth of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. We discuss policy implications of these findings.
Small Fish in a Big Pool: The Discouraging Effects of Relative Assessment
Nicolas Bottan & Dan Bernhardt
University of Illinois Working Paper, August 2024
Abstract:
This paper studies the impact of relative assessment on performance using a quasi-experiment: club-level swimming competitions in the US. By exploiting the age-group structure, where swimmers are assessed against peers within their age group and experience a significant shift in relative standing upon aging up, we identify the causal effects of being assessed against better-performing peers. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that swimmers, on average, swim significantly slower after aging up. This effect is similar across genders and is most pronounced among swimmers in the middle and top of the ability distribution, while those in the bottom third show no significant change. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the psychological impacts of relative assessment in competitive environments.